Northampton only municipality in WMass invited into state fossil fuel-free building pilot program

By ALEXANDER MACDOUGALL
Staff Writer

Published: 10-30-2024 4:15 PM
Modified: 10-31-2024 9:45 AM

NORTHAMPTON — The city has been selected as the 10th and final municipality in the state — and the only one in western Massachusetts — to participate in a state pilot program that would require all future construction and major renovations to be entirely free of fossil fuels.

Aptly titled the “Municipal Fossil Fuel Free Building Demonstration Program,” the pilot allows the selected municipalities to enact new zoning and building code ordinances or bylaws that would ban completely the use of fossil fuels for any new building construction or major renovation projects in an effort to achieve carbon neutrality.

“It’s a feather in the cap of city leaders who have been pushing the green cred, or the renewable and clean energy efforts in the city,” said Ben Weil, director of the Northampton’s Climate and Project Administration department. “Basically the state recognizes the city as being capable of rising to the challenge that the entire state is eventually going to have to get to.”